During the massacre for hostages deal enforced by the Israeli military in Nuseirat, Gaza on June 8th, 2024, Fatima Jamal messaged me: “We are in danger now. The bombs are falling everywhere. Please pray for us. If we die, please tell the world we were a beautiful family.”

Fatima and her family, or what remains of her family, had taken refuge in Nuseirat, not in this war, but after the 2014 Israeli invasion of Gaza when the family home in Shujaiya was annihilated in an airstrike. In that war Fatima had lost her sister Reeham because the Israelis prevented the three-year-old from leaving Gaza to get medical care for severe respiratory distress. She suffocated while waiting for treatment.

In the current phase of genocide, Fatima has lost her brother named Bahaa and a brother-in-law named Mohammed, both age twenty-nine. Bahaa, who was volunteering to help rescue civilians trapped by the fighting, had been driving Mohammed to safety when the Israelis fired at them. The car broke down, and while trying to run away, Bahaa’s leg was hit with machine gun fire. Mohammed tried to drag him to safety but was shot in the face. Someone called an ambulance, but the Israelis wouldn’t let it through. They both bled out by the following day. Each of them left behind a widow and two children that Merriam-Webster calls half-orphans. A couple of crisp, hyphenated words that fail to accurately portray reality.

Since that day Fatima has cried every night on the thin blanket she calls a bed. With her modest Nuseirat house in ruins, she relies on love for survival. Each member of her family is a piece that holds her soul together. Now, in sudden jolts, it’s coming apart. Even her friends from university have died. And with no end to the war in sight, she knows life is no longer guaranteed for anyone.

She had contacted me the previous month looking for help in raising funds to evacuate her mother, who has medical complications from a heart attack she had when she learned that her son had died. Now she has heart attacks every week. There is no treatment available in any of the few remaining half-bombed hospitals. No medication. No EKG. No surgery. No hope.

“Tell me, am I not worthy of help?” Fatima asks, disappointed that the Gaza orientated fundraising groups on social media have not been paying attention to her. Instead, they are prioritizing pregnant women, young widowed mothers and sick children.

“It’s up to God to decide who lives and who dies,” I respond.

“I will die,” she says. “I will give my mother my soul. She can not die.”

Fatima’s only twenty, and I wince as I watch her fragmenting consciousness try to placate the cruelty of the world.

“I have lost hope,” she says the next day. “And am thinking of selling one of my kidneys to save my mother.”

“Selling your kidney won’t work.” I respond. “Who’s going to remove it? How will it get to whoever needs it?”

In an instant she changes the subject: “Today, I saw people whose body parts were scattered on the ground. People were using a plastic bag to gather them up.”

My God, I think. I remember when my mother was dying. I can’t even imagine how to deal with that while witnessing mangled human bodies on the same day. Add to that food shortages, brackish water, living under a tarp…the list of horrors goes on.

“I am waiting to meet God,” Fatima says. “I am waiting for Him to take me away. I am waiting to see my brother and sister in Heaven. Everything will be beautiful in Heaven.”

I’ve heard those words before from refugees who’ve lost family members. Many of the widows say it. Even the ones with young children. Then there are the mothers who’ve lost children. Widowed or not, they don’t want to tell their story. Their loss is too deep. They don’t fundraise to leave Gaza. They don’t think about the future. They have no future.

In the intervening weeks Fatima comes to my Zoom meetings where I have arranged for Americans to meet Palestinian refugees and donate money. But unfortunately, she doesn’t get a lot of donations. It’s hard for someone who’s never left Gaza to master the intricacies of social media fundraising. And I know there are literally thousands of other Go Fund Me campaigns, because someone put them all on a spreadsheet with two thousand eight-hundred rows.

One day Fatima messages me: “Hello Eros, how are you? The war has gone on for a long time. Please tell me, will I survive this war, or will I become a martyr? Will I lose my mother like you?  Please tell me what you expect? I haven’t slept for three nights out of fear.”

“Your mother will die someday no matter what,” I reply. “Live your life the way she wants you to live it. Don’t run from it.”

Fatima understands. Both her uncles’ wives are dead. They died making bread. A bomb exploded outside the school that had been evacuated to. The bread had to be thrown out. It was soaked with blood. They left behind four more half-orphans.

“I will raise them as my own!” Fatima says. “I will be their mother!”

“Someday,” she continues. “When I have money, I will save every child in Gaza! I will raise all the children!”

She’s in a trance. This is how she copes with the disintegration of the world around her, but it’s working.

“I am not afraid anymore,” she told me some weeks later. “I learned English by watching American horror movies. Now I live in a horror movie. But my heart is strong.”

Soon afterwards, she posted a video of her writing the names of donors to her GoFundMe. She’s excited. They are close to getting the money to buy a tent. And she has forgotten, for a little while, that someday, her entire family may die.

The following fundraiser will help bring hope to Fatima Jamal’s family:

Fatima Jamal’s Go Fund Me Campaign

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